How is perfume made?

The Perfume Manufacturing Process

Making a perfume involves collecting ingredients, extracting oils, blending, aging and quality control. Almost like a fine wine, a lot of work and time go into producing a perfume. What’s especially interesting is that many of the methods from ancient times are used by popular perfume brands today.

Of course, the techniques and mixtures have been finetuned and perfected by scientists and other professionals, but some procedures are very similar to their early counterparts, such as expression.

Ingredients Used to Make Perfume

Many perfumes are made by extracting scented oil from natural ingredients. These ingredients can include various plants, fruits, woods and even animal secretions. Other resources like alcohol, coal, tars and petrochemicals can be used during the manufacturing process.

For scents that don’t occur in nature or do not produce essential oils, synthetic chemicals are used to emulate the scent. Many popular and hard to find scents fall into this category, so it’s likely that your favorite perfume uses at least some synthetic scents.

Extraction Methods

Natural ingredients must have their oils extracted in order to create a perfume or cologne. Essential oil extraction can be done several ways: Oils can be obtained through solvent extraction, steam distillation, expression, enfleurage (a process that squeezes out the oils) or maceration.

Check out some of the various tried-and-true extraction methods below, both ancient and modern. Some methods you may be able to DIY at home, but others you might want to leave to the professionals.

Solvent Extraction

This method is performed by putting plants into big, rotating drums. The plants are then covered with petroleum ether or benzene. The plant parts eventually dissolve in whatever solvent is used, leaving a waxy substance that contains the oils.

This substance is then placed in ethyl alcohol. The oil dissolves in the alcohol, which is then burned off, leaving a highly concentrated perfume oil.